All language subtitles for 911.One.Day.In.America.S01E04

RAZZANO: Do you
want me to start?

WOMAN: Absolutely.

RAZZANO: Alright, I'd
like to start this way.

About a year after 9/11,
I got a telephone call from

a professional writer
and he was writing a
story about, um, 9/11.

He was also at
the Marriott Hotel,

Three World Trade Center
in New York, on 9 /11,

and had been staying there.

And he asked that, uh, I give
him an interview and I did and

I told him the, the story
I'm about to tell you.

And, at the end of the
story he said to me, he said,

"Frank, I don't know
if you realize this but there

are only 14 people who, uh,
survived the collapse of both

buildings on 9/11 and
you're one of the 14 people."

Now, as I tell the story,
you may say to yourself,

I made incredibly
bad choices that day or,

you may say I was a
very fortunate person.

You can judge for yourself
which are the, uh, reasons why

I survived that day.

Well, let me
take you back, uh,

I am a lawyer, I had
a case that was pending

in the United States
District Court,

very big case,
and a very important case.

I had a suite of rooms
in the, uh, Marriott Hotel,

on the 19th floor.

The hotel was physically
connected to the North
Tower and, in essence,

I had set up a war room for
the trial in that, uh, suite,

and I had boxes all over
the place and materials,

getting ready for the trial.

I was in bed, and I, suddenly
I heard a huge bang and

I went, instinctively,
went to the windows,

I opened the drapes,

I looked outside and now I
could see fire balls falling

into the street.

(glass shattering)

I was at the apex of my
career at that time and

the thought
occurred to me that,

"If I leave this room
with all my papers,

I may not be able to
get back into this room and

I have a trial
that's coming up.

I need these papers.
I've got to get them out."

And so, I decided,
uh, that the most
important thing for me,

at that point, was to
collect those papers,

put them back in the boxes,

put them in the, uh,
litigation bags and

get them out
of the hotel now.

And I was thinking,
"I wonder if a bellman's

still downstairs
who can help me?"

And, as I was
reaching for the phone,

the building shuddered and
I looked out the window and

I could see,
falling out of the sky,

concrete and steel,
going right past the window,

as if it were a curtain
at a theatre, falling.

And, a day which
was a bright sunny, uh,

late summer day,
turned pitch black.

I realized that these may be
the final moments of my life.

Um...

Then I thought, uh,

"You know, uh, I'm never gonna
see my daughter get married,"

and then I thought
about my, uh, my parents,

and I said to myself, "I
hope I've lived the kind

of life that my
parents can be proud of."

(theme music playing)

♪ ♪

MAN: Everybody alright?

How's the way out of here?

(overlapping chatter)

MAN 2: Yep.

MAN: I got something,
come on guys.

Go!

There's still nobody.

(overlapping chatter)

(overlapping chatter)

PFEIFER: We were in the
lobby of the North Tower,

and the whole area
goes completely dark.

You can't see the hand
in front of your face.

MAN: Let's get some lights.

(overlapping chatter)

PFEIFER: And I got
on my radio and I said,

"Command to all
units in Tower One,

evacuate the building."

MAN (over radio): Command one?

PFEIFER: Command
post in Tower One.

All units.

Evacuate the building.

Command post to all units.

MAN (over radio):
Command post to all units.

(overlapping chatter)

MAN 2: Let's go, what floor?

MAN 3: We came
in this way, no?

MAN 2: No, we came in
the other way, over there.

MAN 3: Let's go!

(radio chatter)

PFEIFER: I made the
evacuation order and then

I felt somebody at my feet.

I grabbed the flashlight and,
as I shined the flashlight,

I saw the white collar
of our chaplain,

he was lying at
the floor, at my feet.

Hey guys, yeah,
we need a hand here.

MAN: Hey guys, come back down!

PFEIFER: Hey, we need a,
guys, we're gonna take this.

PFEIFER: So, I,
I removed his white collar,

I checked for a pulse
and I couldn't find one.

And I knew, at that point,
that, um, part of the building

had to, had to hit
him and he was gone.

So, Chief Hayden said,
"We're gonna carry him out."

MAN: This way.

(coughs)

MAN 2: Off the
escalator right here.

Come on.

Okay? Right, here.

(overlapping chatter)

MAN: You okay?
MAN 2: Yeah.

PFEIFER: Alright,
we got four guys.

(overlapping chatter)

Is this the way?
Do you know the building?

MAN: I'll find a way out.

PFEIFER: Let's go, what floor?

(coughs)

(radio chatter)

Can we get out here?

(overlapping chatter)

MAN: Try and go across.

MAN: The front door
is completely blocked.

MAN 2: Is it?

MAN 3: Are we gonna
come back for them?

MAN: Totally blocked.
MAN 2: Totally?

MAN: We gotta go,
we gotta go out there.

PFEIFER: At that point all I
heard on the radio was static.

(beep)

I think everybody was trying
to talk at the same time,

it was impossible to receive,

or to transmit, any
message at that moment.

(sirens)

(bell ringing)

MAN: This is the
condition of my building,

firemen are coming in.

(coughing)

Janey, try on your cell.

JANEY: It doesn't work.

MAN: Yeah, hello
hold on, one second,

I have your
husband here, okay?

MAN 2: Can you get
an outside line 'cause
I gotta call somebody

to tell 'em I'm alive.

FIREFIGHTER: Hello?
Hello? I'm alright.

I don't believe it. Everybody,
everybody's dead Hope.

I'll call you back.

MAN: Oh my God.

(ringing)

As he said, everybody's dead.

They're going back out.

(cries)

MAN: Nice and slow.
Just go nice and slow.

♪ ♪

RAZZANO: Ultimately, the
building stopped shaking and

I was still in the room.

I, I was astonished that
I was still alive and, uh,

I raced for the door.

I opened the door and
looked down the hallway,

it was pitch black.

JOHNSON: Our job
was to help search and
evacuate the Marriott Hotel.

After the first
tower collapsed,

we were in the hotel,
we couldn't see,

we couldn't barely
breath and I, I...

it was like, literally
like lights out.

And, uh, as the dust settled,

in front of us
was basically a

wall of debris from
left side of the hallway,

right side of the hallway,
from floor to ceiling and

we started calling out for
the other guys and I said,

"I'm okay, are you okay?

Who's okay?"

You know, like that,
kind of thing

and then we heard two more,

I'm okay's, where
we should've heard three.

There was no...

His name was, Ruben Correa,
was part of our team and, uh,

we were screaming at
the top of our lungs,

trying radios, the radios
were just full of chatter and

it was just
practically useless.

And, uh, it was pretty frantic
when we couldn't find Ruben.

Uh...

Finding him, that's all,
that's all you wanted to do.

(radio chatter)

RAZZANO: I went down
the fire staircase,

I don't know why,
but I yelled out,

"Is anyone there?"

And I heard voices from
below yelling up and saying,

"Yeah, we're here, we're
on the third‐floor landing,

but we can't get down
because the staircase has
collapsed down to the ground."

And I got enough debris
moved so that I was able to

get through to the
third‐floor landing.

At this point,
we are all covered,

literally covered,
in dirt, uh, dust, debris

and in, literally, in the
door jam of the staircase,

of the fire staircase,

there was a fireman.

I know now that that
fireman was, Jeff Johnson.

JOHNSON: We started
hearing voices and, uh,

they were on floors below us.

I made my way down
and that's where I
ran into three gentlemen,

Frank Razzano
and the two other people.

We didn't know this but the
South Tower had collapsed and

taken out the entire
middle of the Marriott Hotel.

RAZZANO: There was
steel beam that was
wedged in the fire staircase.

There was this
huge hole in the wall.

He got on that beam
and shimmied down

the beam to the ledge,
looked up at us, and said,

"Everyone out in
the street is dead.

The policeman are dead.
The firemen are dead."

He says, "Nobody is
coming to save us.

If we're gonna get
out of this building,

we have to get out of
this building on our own."

JOHNSON: I said,
"Everybody listen,

follow me, do what you
want but I'm getting out."

And they all agreed,
whatever I was gonna do,

they were going to do.

I didn't ask 'em their names,
or anything like that,

we checked and they were okay,

so then they became
part of our group and we,

we proceeded down from there.

DOBSON: We're in
the back of the ambulance,

where usually you
only have three people,

we have seven.

The wind is almost like a
cyclone we're in right now.

It was dark,
they were screaming,

the people on the floor, I
said to them, the first thing,

"We're gonna
be okay, you know?"

So I put the
lights on and I said,

"We're gonna be fine,
we're gonna be okay.

They're gonna find us here.

We'll be alright."

But, meanwhile, I say
to myself in my mind,

"Jimmie, this
is bad, you know?

This is bad, we might not, uh,
make it outta here."

It felt like, um,
someone was putting a
hot sock down your throat.

This air was heated
and intensified and
since it was cement,

it was so dry that it
just felt like something
was clogging your throat,

to the put that you
can't breathe no more.

So, excuse me,
so I say to myself,

"What can I do?
I have to improvise."

So I tell them, "I'm
turning on the oxygen,"

and I said, "We're gonna
do like skin divers do,

we're gonna buddy breathe."

I said, "You take
it for a little bit,

pass it onto the next person,

you get a little more,
keep passing it around."

I said, "If we
can get out now,
it's the time to get out."

♪ ♪

When we came out
it was silence.

There was no‐one
calling for anybody.

Everybody was gone.

Almost like the
end of the world.

(distant sirens)

And then I realized, when
I got out of the ambulance,

there's one of us missing.

My partner, Marvin,
wasn't with me.

And I didn't have
Marvin in the ambulance,

I thought he was dead then.

I worked with him every
Tuesday and we worked for a

couple of years together and,

when you sit that
close to another person,

you start knowing
them better than

you know your own wife.

Just a truly good person,
uh, good hearted,

the big part is working with
a partner like, Marvin, is,

after you have a bad call,

you talk to him about it,
or he would talk to me about

how he felt and
that's a true friend.

It's not a partner
no more, it's family.

I had to know for sure if,
if Marvin made it or not.

I had to find him.

(radio chatter)

PFEIFER: Battalion one
to Division one.

(radio chatter)

Battalion one to Division one.

(radio chatter)

Battalion one to Division one.

PFEIFER:
We had no idea that a
building just collapsed.

(radio chatter)

But we needed to find a
way out and I knew there was

a passageway to the
World Financial Center,

which was across the street.

(radio chatter)

And I can remember a cold
chill running down my spine.

(radio chatter)

And couldn't comprehend
what I was seeing.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

HAYDEN: Now, we got
everybody out the lobby.

PFEIFER: And we
went to the corner opposite

One World Trade Center,

and we started to regroup.

FIREFIGHTER: In
the hotel lobby,

we've got about 12.

PFEIFER: That's
trapped in the lobby?

FIREFIGHTER: Yeah,
of the hotel.

PFEIFER: Okay.

FIREFIGHTER: There might be,
all firemen I know are out.

PFEIFER: What
about in Tower One,

we have people up
on the upper floors.

FIREFIGHTER: I have no idea.

OFFICER: This is what
is coming over our radio,

get outta the area, the
second tower is coming down.

REPORTER: They tell you the
second tower is coming down?

OFFICER: Yes, it's
about to collapse.

Out of the area.

FIREFIGHTER: Joe, Joe.

Joe!

Keep everybody up and
respond to central please.

PFEIFER: As we
were trying to just regroup,

somebody yelled that the
other building could collapse.

(radio chatter)

I looked up and then

we heard another loud rumble.

(rumbling)

MAN: Oh my God!

(rumbling)

(debris blowing)

(coughing)

PFEIFER: And I was with,
Jules, and he had his camera

and I remember him ducking
behind a small truck.

I jumped on top of him, which
seemed like a good idea at the

time until we heard all the
steel crashing around us.

(smashing)

(coughs)

MAN (over radio):
Mayday, mayday.

PFEIFER: And, for
a couple of seconds,

I wondered if I
was dead or alive.

(coughing)

MAN (over radio):
Control, where are you?

MAN 2 (over radio): Over.

(yelling)

(spitting)

MAN: We need help!

(spits)

(radio chatter)

This way.

MAN 2: Help, help.

(coughing)

DOBSON: That day, no matter
how seasoned you are,

you had that in your
head that you might die.

(coughing)

When this tower came down,
it's the North Tower,

and I'm North,
it's coming down on me.

I get back into the front, I
put the ambulance into gear,

I say, "Come on,
don't stall now,

I gotta get outta here."

I'm just trying to
survive and I go and

I get to the emergency room.

I get to the
emergency room before the
smoke hits there and I said,

"Close the doors,
it happened again,

both towers are down.

They're coming down,

there's nothing but
black smoke coming."

MAN: Let's go, we got to move.

DOBSON: And you
hear them all saying,

"Oh my God, oh my God."

How many people just died?

And I'm thinking, "I still
don't know where Marvin is."

I come out of the
emergency room and I said,

"I wanna get up to where
the building's collapsed,"

because...

(cries)

'Cause being
a partner, like that,

and having that bond,

I couldn't work every day
knowing that he died and

I would be blaming myself,
because in the beginning,

we should've stuck together,
but I decided,

on my own,

that I was gonna do this,
no matter what happens.

Not knowing what happened
to Marvin made me go back.

(beeping)

And, as I'm getting
closer and closer,

I'm hearing, like, slaps on
the side of the ambulance and

people are having
trouble breathing,

these are the people that
were laying on the floor now.

And I take 'em to the
hospital and I do this,

like, three, to four times.

And I probably
transport 16, 17 people

to the hospital that day.

And now, I'm
only getting, like,

a block or two in,
a policeman says,

"Don't go no further."

So I said, "Well, I
gotta get up there,

I gotta get up there."

I tell him, he says,

"Don't go no further
because the pavement is

getting mushy and
the subway's there,

the ambulance might go through
the ground into the subway."

So, I say, "I'm gonna go."

Now it looks like hell and
it's just black smoke and

fire and, as I'm going
up right to Broadway,

all of a sudden I see somebody
and he's standing there and

he's got a phone and
there's no‐one else around and

I'm saying to
myself, "Marvin?"

BETHEA: When the
building was coming down

I surely thought I was dead.

I'm standing there, in the
middle of all this debris,

and I see what
looks like strobe
lights and I'm, like,

"Oh, this is my mind
now playing tricks on me."

And then, all of a sudden,

this vehicle stops
and lo and behold,

jumps out, it's Jimmie.

DOBSON: I put the ambulance
in park and I ran towards him.

He ran towards me.

We hugged like we never
saw each other before.

We're alive and
we're alive together.

BETHEA: We didn't
have time to cry,

we just embraced
each other and said,

"Alright, we got a job to do.

Let's do it."

(radio chatter)

(radio chatter)

(radio chatter)

RAZZANO: After the
North Tower came down,

we were buried in about
four feet worth of debris,

and I, I remember thinking,

"This can't be happening
to me twice in one day."

When the fireman, uh,
dug his way out of the
debris and stood up,

his immediate reaction
was to assess the situation,

he says, "That steel beam
is starting to buckle, and,

if we don't
get out of this room,

we're gonna die in this room."

JOHNSON: We couldn't
see outside anymore.

We was basically,
stuck in this area and

I saw a little bit of
light under a table and

I crawled under the table and,

kind of, stuck my head out.

We were about
ten feet above a floor,

covered with steel rebar,
steel beams, concrete,

it was not a level...

it was a demolition field.

PFEIFER: In the
debris he finds a rug,

he anchors it on the floor
and he throws the rug over

the side of the building,
and he says,

"This is the way out."

JOHNSON:
Actually, it wasn't a rug,

it was a piece of
curtain and I said,

"Listen, go feet first,
through the hole,

hold onto the curtain
as long as you can and

then you should,
your feet should hit
the beams or floor."

RAZZANO: I
honestly believe that,

if I was left
to my own devices,

I'd still be...

I'd still have been on that,
uh, third‐floor landing, uh,

and I don't know whether
I would've, would've survived.

I went down, then
the fireman came down.

And the last thing I remember
the fireman saying was,

"Keep moving west until you
get to the Hudson River."

♪ ♪

They'd set up a triage
center at Ellis Island.

MAN: I want you
to hold my hand,

come on board, get inside.

Anybody else, come on!

RAZZANO: We got out into
the middle of the river and

I looked back at
the skyline of New York

and there were no
World Trade Center there.

I turned to the guy who
was driving the boat I said,

"Where are the
World Trade Center?"

He said, "They're gone,

they collapsed down
to their foundations."

(cries)

And that was the first time,

(clears throat)

I knew that,
that is what happened.

The other thing I
thought of, uh, was, uh...

My grandparents.

(trembling)

I had grown up
in New York City,

but I had never
been to Ellis Island, uh,

all four of my grandparents
entered the United States

through Ellis Island
and I wondered, uh,

whether my grandparents...

(cries)

Would, could
ever have imagined

that this would happen
in the United States.

(coughing)

WOMAN: Anybody
need some water?

(radio chatter)

PFEIFER: After
the collapse of the Towers,

we lost our command staff,

our chief department and

so many other staff chiefs,

they were all killed.

One of the most amazing
stories from that day,

on how to re‐establish command,
was done by, Chief Hayden.

He got up on a
burnt out fire truck and

those of us who survived
started to gather and

Chief Hayden gave us an order,

it sounded pretty
strange at the time, he said,

"I want you to take
off your helmets."

And we looked at him,

"We don't take off our
helmets, this is who we are."

And, and the chief said,

"No, I want you to
take off your helmets and

we're gonna have a
moment of silence,

because we lost a
lot of people today."

♪ ♪

And as others came
back to the site,

we were able to
re‐establish command,

to search and rescue people.

And then, I
thought of my brother,

and even though I know he was
there I looked at Engine 33,

the riding list,
uh, in the truck,

I remember seeing, you know,

yes he was working that day,

I wasn't just
imagining it, um.

I tried to call
him on the radio,

"Battalion one to Engine 33,
Battalion one to Engine 33."

And there was no answer.

Like so many units that
day there was no answer

when we called them.

We knew from earthquakes

people are found in
all different pockets.

We figured, okay, maybe
there is a pocket there,

where we'll find a
bunch of people and

I was hoping my
brother would survive.

JOHNSON:
Emotionally I was a wreck.

The very frustrating
and upsetting thing was

not knowing a,
about Ruben, you know?

And, uh, my captain, uh,

Captain Lobe, uh, I
wanted to go back out and

he wouldn't let
me go back out.

So, he wanted me
to go home and, uh...

(cries)

I begged him to stay.

Sorry.

I didn't know
what I was gonna do.

I just didn't wanna leave.

The thing about losing
Ruben and, unfortunately,

we never found him, uh,

is he had a wife
and daughters and, uh,

that bothered me

a lot that we never found him.

RAZZANO: In the wake of 9/11,

I think the way
I've led my life

in the past 20 years

has been different than
the way I lived it before.

I have tried, in
the last 20 years,

to spend more
time with my family, uh,

I've tried to be
less, uh, obsessed

about my own personal career,

my and my profession.

Have I been
successful all of the time?

No.

My wife will tell you
that I still have the...

the same tendency
but, uh, I'm trying, um...

You know, when you stop
and think about it, isn't
this what happened with, uh.

Uh...

Ebenezer Scrooge in,
in A Christmas Carol?

After the events of that, uh,
famous Christmas Eve, uh,

he tried to reform his life,
he tried to do better, uh.

Was he always successful?

Well, we don't know
because Charles Dickens
doesn't tell us, but,

I bet he wasn't
always successful,

but I bet he
was always trying.

As I thought about, uh...

my role in 9/11,

I realized that
it was that fireman

who provided me
with the leadership

to direct me out
of that building and

that I could never, I would
not have done it on my own.

CATHERINE: I,
Catherine Lucas Razzano.

OFFICIANT: Take you,
Thomas Martin Rile.

CATHERINE: Take you,
Thomas Martin Rile.

OFFICIANT: To be
my beloved husband.

CATHERINE: To be
my beloved husband.

OFFICIANT: I promise
to be true to you.

CATHERINE: I promise
to be true to you.

OFFICIANT: All
the days of my life.

CATHERINE: All
the days of my life.

RAZZANO: Now that my
parents are gone I, I
have the two Borger girls,

who now are the
head of the family.

(clapping)

I have one other,
uh, person to remember
and that's, Jeff Johnson,

the guy who, uh,
led me out of the
World Trade Center on 9/11.

(cheering)

(applause)

Thank you very much.

It was one of the
happiest days of my life, uh,

and my daughter has, uh...

had a wonderful marriage and

two beautiful children and...

(cries)

Jeff, thank you, thank you
for giving me that moment and

for giving me all the time
I've had with her boys and

with my other grandchildren.

Thank you very much.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.